I tried Ubuntu recently out of curiously. It was buggy, slow and contained a lot of promotional material. For context, I hadn't used it since a wipe my machine after they forced snap.
I think that the last time I used Ubuntu was like 10+ years ago. Too many awesome distros out there to remain on it, and even then, it was already broken.
I think that the last time I used Ubuntu was like 10+ years ago. Too many awesome distros out there to remain on it, and even then, it was already broken.
No they just package the exact same versions, but differently. It uses rpm-ostree which is like Git but for operating systems (binaries).
A quick tour through Atomic Fedora
It relies on a main image, which could just be used like that. This is a minimal Fedora install, containing everything thats needed and nothing more.
You would then install apps via Flatpak, Appimage, binaries, Toolbox etc.
Or you can layer RPM packages, and you can install everything as on normal fedora. This will make updates a bit slower but is usually needed for small things like a different shell.
These packages will be kept updated in parallel to the OS. The OS is always 100% what Fedora ships, while the RPMs come from all the repos you can imagine, COPR, rpmfusion etc.
Rpm-ostree pulls down the update and the packages are added to that. But instead of modifying the current OS, it clones it, using the current one, and the differences (updates) that are downloaded.
This new image is now either complete, or gets the wanted RPMs added or removed. The new image is then set as new boot target.
You can use your system how long you want, but when you reboot (and this takes not any longer than a regular reboot) you will boot into the new version.
If something broke, you always have the last system kept. You can increase that number, so only the x-th last image gets automatically deleted. And you can manually sudo ostree admim pin 0 the current system, if you know it works well and you have for example a driver update, or a big system update, and want to be sure you will have this as backup.
You can also rebase, which means your system will now mirror a different repo of theirs. For example from Silverblue (GNOME) to Kinoite (KDE). This will change everything so that you now 100% have the packages of the new repo, failsafe.
If it would fail, the update would cancel and you dont get one.
So remember:
the system by default is 100% the one that Fedora ships. No manual upgrades, no strange "cant reproduce on my system" conflicts, nothing.
you can still install all RPMs you want
you can remove RPMs from the system
you can reset the system again to be 100% upstream
you can rebase to a different variant. Like Fedora to uBlue, including NVidia drivers and some packages. Or advanced images like Bluefin/Aurora, or Secureblue variants
updates either work 100% or fail
you will always have a fallback system (not only a kernel, an entire system) and you can keep as many as you want, forever
So basically: rpm-ostree gives you the needed control to have a stable OS.
But still not everything is "immutable" /managed with rpm-ostree. Your entire /var is mutable, and /etc and /home are symlinks from that. This means you can configure and break what you want, which can also be problematic.
Note though, that the vanilla /etc files are stored in /usr/etc, so you can restore them. Make sure to exclude crypttab, fstab and a few more!
I have had a LOT of issues, but they're mostly of the papercut variety - and most of them have to do with Plasma 6 rather than Fedora 40 itself (at least I think so).
I think my CPU is running hotter on 40 than it was on 39, though.
Yeah nearly all Fedora KDE issues are direct upstream Plasma issues. And not too many, tried Plasma 6 on Kinoite Rawhide for a while and reported a lot of them.
You can do the same with COSMIC and help make their release better!
Yeah, Gnome 46 has been a really solid, small upgrade in my experience. I swear it's made things smoother and more consistent, plus some of the minor visual tweaks and refinements are welcome. Turns out a lot of what they did is under-the-hood optimizations and improvements to accessibility, so the Gnome desktop update itself has been a small but welcome improvement.
So far I haven't had any issues elsewhere I'm Fedora 40, but maybe that's because I've checked for new updates pretty frequently and done some restarts since the upgrade, that might be keeping things fresh.
I upgraded from 39 to 40 and I think the only issues I had were:
Background I was using got removed, got a better one anyway
A few gnome extensions stopped working and I had to update them or find an alternative
Had to re-create virtual disk mapped to real disk for booting windows installation in virtual box (there is a sonicwall VPN I have to use for work which only works on Windows)
I think that was it!
I have had some strange behaviour from Firefox saying it's become unresponsive a few times and at the same time Thunderbird but that seems to have fixed itself now
Background I was using got removed, got a better one anyway
I had that happen a few times. This time I downloaded those backgrounds again (from gnome-backgrounds repository). Still, it's pretty annoying to have this happen.
I upgraded just before the beta. Discovered a mutter crash, reported it, it was fixed in a day or so.
Yes. Numerous COPR repos not updated aside, my sddm theme broke and doesn't detect Qtgraphicaleffects (which is installed). You know what the weirdest part is? There are 2 "dependencies" for the theme: quickcontrols and graphicaleffects, and luckily, quickcontrols was detected properly. I ended up rewriting the theme, and while it works, it is far from where it needs to be. Safe to say, I'm very annoyed.
Edit: I actually did a clean install, as I tried some other distros a few days before F40 released.
You can install sunshine on Fedora 40 with their COPR repo. Their GitHub releases lag behind on OS releases, but the COPR is automatically configured for new versions of Fedora since it doesn't rely on compiling in a Docker container. Haven't tried it myself, but it was recommended on their issues page.
qt was stuck with 5.15 because the telegram app depended on it (sigh). Had to do a dnf upgrade --best --allowerasing for the update to qt6 (and the removal of telegram lol).
I decided to upgrade, and so far everything is working fine. I had some hiccups after the installation, but a reboot fixed all of them. Thanks for your input :)
It was going perfectly smooth (Plasma 6 wayland, amdgpu drivers); though the past week or so I started getting random shell crashes. (It's very impressive that Qt apps all come back unscathed -- but I don't use too many Qt apps.)
I get SELinux warnings related to Proton/Wine (something about "execheap"), but everything still works as it should.
I also had a problem with one of my displays not working until I turned "dim screen after xyz" off (will have to look up what that setting was titled) in KDE. That is a weird issue as it completely crashed the display, even connecting to other computers doesn't work unless I unplug and replug the power of the display.
Other than that, worked fine so far and I've been using it since the beta.
Honestly? I found it suggested on that other site.
Something to do with the kernel modules. All I know is that I had no working GPU, ran that, rebooted, and then everything was gold.
I'm fairly confident that it's a change in Flatpak itself rather than any one specific Flatpak, since all of my apps now use the same new screen sharing interface. Difference is that it actually works in those apps.
Use the Atomic variants from uBlue! This will make sure stuff like that happens on their servers, they fix it once and the users always get working updates. (Maybe with a day delay in cases like this)
I would 100% use that. Snap on Fedora is likely not sandboxed at all, as it relies on Apparmor, and also not really that well maintained as nobody cares.
Had a sound issue: output device options only listed "Dummy Output" and nothing was listed for input devices. I eventually got my headset to be recognized again, but sadly couldn't tell you what did it, since I tried so many things and I lack proper understanding of the Linux sound scene.
Just in case it's useful to someone, here's a collection of ideas I found while working through the issue:
Make sure wireplumber service is enabled and running OK
Plug in an HDMI device and reboot (some people said this permanently fixed a similar issue)
Backup, then delete $XDG_STATE_HOME/wireplumber and reboot
Check if you have installed the packages:
kernel-modules
alsa-sof-firmware
Note, however, that I really don't understand what some of these do. You should be very wary of taking suggestions from people who don't know what they're talking about... unless you're desperate enough and want your sound back, perhaps.
...Also, here's a gentle reminder to test your sound device with other equipment and try different ports/adapters, if available. Wasn't my case, but sometimes stuff simply breaks at inopportune times.